This is a three-year integrated research, training, and service project designed to develop optimal relations between the alternative systems of professional and folk healing available to the mentally ill and high risk segments of an inner-city neighborhood. The project consists of two principle phases. In the first, an "ethnographic phase," the lay "healers" or helpers in a medium-sized industrial city of the Northeast were identified and their beliefs and practices described. In the second, a "clinical phase," in which the project is now engaged, patients are being interviewed regarding their beliefs about their illnesses and their utilization of alternative lay practitioners. Patients who are significantly involved in folk systems to belief and practice will be followed through the professional treatment episode to document the significance of these beliefs and practices in the professional assessment and treatment processes and to provide the empirical basis for development of treatment strategies and care delivery patterns which might maximize the benefits and reduce the risks of the now independent alternatives of folk or professional treatment systems.